| 1 | James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion, greeting. |
| 2 | Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations; |
| 3 | Knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience. |
| 4 | And let patience have [its] perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing. |
| 5 | But if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. |
| 6 | But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. |
| 7 | For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord; |
| 8 | a doubleminded man, unstable in all his ways. |
| 9 | But let the brother of low degree glory in his high estate: |
| 10 | and the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. |
| 11 | For the sun ariseth with the scorching wind, and withereth the grass: and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his goings. |
| 12 | Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he hath been approved, he shall receive the crown of life, which [the Lord] promised to them that love him. |
| 13 | Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man: |
| 14 | but each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. |
| 15 | Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death. |
| 16 | Be not deceived, my beloved brethren. |
| 17 | Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning. |
| 18 | Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. |
| 19 | Ye know [this], my beloved brethren. But let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: |
| 20 | for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. |
| 21 | Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. |
| 22 | But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves. |
| 23 | For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror: |
| 24 | for he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. |
| 25 | But he that looketh into the perfect law, the [law] of liberty, and [so] continueth, being not a hearer that forgetteth but a doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing. |
| 26 | If any man thinketh himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue but deceiveth his heart, this man's religion is vain. |
| 27 | Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep oneself unspotted from the world. |